Textile fabrics surround us from the moment we arrive in the world up to the moment we leave it.
Fabrics protect our body from cold, heat, sun and dirt, and give us a feeling of security, carry our loads, decorate us, our home and our goods and chattels, and fulfil our need for sensuousness quite unlike any other material.

Textiles and their variety of weaves and structures – which have developed all over the world over thousands of years – also serve to mediate the knowledge and history of cultures and peoples.

It hasn’t been long since textile craftsmanship was dismissed as “women’s stuff“ and women’s housework – until in the early 1980s when artists such as Rosemarie Trockel turned this cliché on its head.

It is especially works of art, such as the embroidered pictures and stitched sculptures of Ina Loitzl, that avail themselves of this conceptual appropriation and once again draw on the traditional activities of embroidery and sewing. The messages lying at the heart of these emerging works, however, speak a clearly recognizable language of emancipation.

In Helga Cmelka’s graphic art, subtle fabric structures are discernable. Fabrics such as organzine and tulle and Cmelka’s finely applied lines using needle and thread generate flows and horizons.

An unusual contribution comes from Barbara Bernsteiner, who is known for her installations of objects alienated from their original concreteness by being wrapped in grey wool. For the KunstTextile (Art Textiles) exhibition, she sent off to the gallery a nightmarish invasion of soft toys whose eyes blink menacingly at night….

Masterpieces of a sensitive dialogue on philosophical text art and on the medium of the noble handicraft of tapestry steeped in history are represented by the textile objects created by Peter Assmann in collaboration with the Sicilian artist Iberia Medici.